Set Apart for the LORD - Exodus 22:18- 20

Good morning everyone. Welcome to Faith Bible Church, and it's a blessing to have you here, and those that are listening in. Happy 4th of July tomorrow. We have liberty provided, given us by the Lord through the function of our government, and we can come here today and worship and freely express and to share what is in the gospel message.

That is not true in every place, in every country, and in this point in time we are blessed to be able to continue to do this, so, and to gather. So we thank the Lord for that, and as we celebrate our Independence Day, but we are dependent on our Lord Jesus Christ, are we not?

It's not, if we're acting independently, then we've got a problem. We better go to the Lord in that, so. Would you please join with me in prayer? Lord God, we thank you, Father, that you have gathered us together today, Father, that you are our Lord and Savior, that we might lift you up today, that you would be pleased with our offerings of praise and worship to you, Lord, because you are just a magnificent God, and you are worthy of our praise, and you are more than we could imagine, Lord, that we can approach the throne, and we pray that we could ready our hearts, prepare our hearts, Lord, for communion as well, that we could search our hearts in making sure that there is nothing wicked within us, that we would confess our sins, that we would be made right before a righteous and holy God.

God, we thank you for the country that we live. Lord, we thank you that we have the liberties that we have to worship together, to gather, to assemble, and that is a tremendous blessing in these times in this world.

Lord, even with all of its problems, Lord, we know that you are the Lord over all. You have had victory over sin and Satan, and we rest in that. So may we find peace in you, Father, in everything as we go through life, knowing the Savior we have rest in the God and Creator of the universe.

So God, bless our time today as we worship you in spirit and in truth, Father. May we honor you, and we just are thankful to be here, Lord. We ask all.

These things in Jesus' name. Amen. Good morning. Let's stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage, and let's stand and sing.

The Greatest Commandment and the Law

Good morning. Scripture reading this morning is from the book of Matthew,.

Chapter 22, verses 37 through 40. Matthew 22, 37 through 40. Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like it.

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. May the Lord add his blessing to the reading here in his holy word.

And let's stand and sing. Be thou my vision and teach me thy way. Thank you for singing,.

And please be seated. Children are now dismissed to Children's Church as Pastor Iljin comes.

The Holiness of God's Law in Exodus 22

Please turn with me to Exodus, chapter 22, verses 18 through 31. Exodus, chapter 22, verses 18 through 31. You shall not permit a sorceress to live. Whoever lies with an animal shall surely be put to death.

He who sacrifices to any God except to the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed. You shall neither mistreat a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child.

If you afflict them in any way and they cry at all to me, I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath will become hot, and I will kill you with the sword. Your wives shall be widows and your children fatherless.

If you lend money to any of my people who are poor among you, you shall not be like a money lender to him. You shall not charge him interest. If you ever take your neighbor's garment as a pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down, for that is his only covering.

It is his garments for his skin. What will he sleep in? And it will be that when he cries to me, I will hear, for I am gracious. You shall not revile God nor curse a ruler of your people. You shall not delay to offer the first of your ripe produce and your juices.

The firstborn of your sons you shall give to me. Likewise, you shall do with your oxen and your sheep. It shall be with its mother seven days, and on the eighth day you shall give it to me, and you shall be holy men to me.

You shall not eat meat torn by beasts in the field. You shall throw it to the dogs. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, we are thankful for your law and how you graciously reveal who you are and what you do to people like us.

Thank you that the law is so protective. Thank you that the law is so merciful and the law teaches us how to live. Father, we thank you for Christ who fulfilled the law on our behalf so that we may live in his righteousness.

Father, we also thank you for the nation that we are living in that protects our freedom to worship. Thank you for all the men and women who sacrifice their lives to keep this nation free from tyranny, and we pray that you would raise up leaders who would continue to sacrifice their lives for this nation's freedom.

In Jesus' name. Amen. This text is seemingly a collection of quote-unquote miscellaneous laws. It starts from sorcery and then ends with being holy by not eating meat torn by beasts. And in fact, some translations, if they do have headings, some of them call this miscellaneous laws.

However, today I would like to go over how thoughtfully structured this section is and how relevant these laws are to us today. And this is because these laws teach or rather taught the ancient Israelites how to live as God's people, how to have a relationship with the Holy God in a land that's surrounded by wicked pagan nations.

The practices that are forbidden here are practices that the wicked pagan nations practiced. It was their lifestyle and the commands they are commanded to do on behalf of the most vulnerable are what the wicked nations did not do for their poor and vulnerable.

So the main point of our text this morning is how must God's people relate to God when they're surrounded by godless nations? When we look at the main point, main question that way, it becomes so relevant to us.

After all, even though we live in a free country where we're free to worship, we are still surrounded by godless pagan neighbors, godless pagan politicians who govern us, and godless pagan family members who gather on holidays together.

How must God's people live when we're surrounded by pagans? But how must we live and still have a relationship with the Holy God? So the first subsection today is from verses 18 through 20. God's people must not replace God with anything.

God's people must not replace God with anything. When you look at these three verses, verses 18 through 20, you may be wondering how is it possible to group these verses together? For one thing, committing any of these sins will lead to death.

That's something that's certain that we can see in the text. Any of these sins will lead to automatic death. However, aside from the same punishment, they are seemingly unrelated. The key word is seemingly.

In fact, if we view this topically, one could expect three different sermons. Witchcraft, sexual immorality, idolatry. Oh my. In Revelation 21 .8, however, all three of them are grouped together as well.

But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake that which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

Those who practice sexual immorality, sorcery, idolatry will have no part in God's people, but rather will face God's wrath for all eternity. And what do they have all in common that the apostle John also groups them together?

Not just Moses here. Well, those who practice sorcery, sexual immorality, and idolatry are not worshiping the one true God. They have substituted something else in place of the Lord. And in order to know how they have done that, we need to unpack each command individually.

First, the Lord commands Israel to eradicate any form of sorcery. Sorcery is also known as witchcraft, magic. You shall not permit a sorceress to live. Sorcery is not new to Israel at all. In fact, when the Lord performed wonders in Egypt in order to deliver His people out of it, Pharaoh's sorcerers attempt to imitate God's miracles.

They attempted to control the created order, changing the Nile into blood, right? They wanted to control and manipulate God's creation. And by performing the secret arts, they tried to downplay God's power and aggrandize their own significance, right?

If I can do that, well, then God is not so strong. Well, if I can copy that, well, what's to worry about? Sorcery is a perverse attempt to plagiarize the omnipotent God. Sorcery is a perverse attempt to plagiarize the omnipotent God.

Witchcraft, in the end, is a wicked way to replace the Lord. This is why Israel as a nation could not let a sorceress to live. Israel was commanded to eliminate anyone who attempted to replace the Lord through sorcery.

Just last year, I have seen more pentagrams and other remnants of satanic rituals more so than any other years combined. It's on the news, it's in entertainment, it's in my neighborhood. Witchcraft is no longer a taboo, but widely practiced publicly.

And because magic seeks to control things that God has not given anyone to control, Christians have no business dabbling in magic in any way. We must flee from it and pray that those who practice witchcraft may repent lest they face God's wrath for all eternity.

Second, the Lord commands Israel to eliminate bestiality. Whoever lies with an animal shall surely be put to death. The word to lie with has a sexual connotation here. It is to commit bestiality. Surprisingly, out of all the ancient Near Eastern cultures, only the Hittites banned bestiality.

Where Israel was going was not a nice kid-friendly neighborhood. It was a land full of idolatry and debauchery. However, the Hittites don't ban bestiality completely, but rather disturbingly allows for a human and a horse to have a sexual relationship.

Extremely disturbing. All this is to say the Lord, through His law, protects His people from the influence of their wicked neighbors. That's what the law was doing. Now, how does bestiality relate to idolatry?

Well, since the Lord is the creator, He has the prerogative to decide how His creatures ought to live. When Adam was first created, there was no suitable mate for him. No other creature was fitting. Now, what does God do?

Well, Adam, you gotta live for yourself, live by yourself. No, the Lord graciously forms the perfect partner for Adam, and her name's Eve. The Lord graciously gave Eve to Adam so that Adam will not be alone.

Ever since the beginning of creation, a human male's only suitable mate has been a single human female. Now, what happens when idolaters take the gift of sexuality? Well, Romans 1, 25 through 26 actually paints a picture accurately.

The idolaters exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator, her, who is forever praised. Amen. Verse 26, because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.

Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. Although Paul paints the link from idolatry to homosexuality here, it would also be applicable to show the progression from idolatry to bestiality because it also is an unnatural sexual relation that directly goes against God's created order.

When people abandon the one true God, they inevitably abandon God's true way. When people forsake God, they deify themselves to reorder God's created order according to their lustful desires. And this is not new to us.

When people use terms like my gender identity or my sexual orientation, it is a definite sign that they have an idolatrous relationship with their gender and sexuality. It is not God-centered but self-centered.

It is no longer God who made them male and female, but my feelings and emotions that overrule the God-given biological and theological reality. When people go farther and farther away from God, when the cultures leave God's standard, they adopt their own perverse standard.

And this means unless this nation also repents, we probably will see more heinous, wicked identities. And it might involve animals this time too. Third, God's people must not partake in idolatry. He who sacrifices to any God except to the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed.

When someone sacrifices to any other God, he is effectively worshiping something that has been created. After all, there is no other God but the Lord alone. So now, how did other gods come about? After all, there's no other God but the Lord alone.

Well, they were created by humans. As God's creature, we're to worship the Lord only because he created us. Idolatry is a total reversion of that order. The creature creates gods to worship. Idolatry de-gods the creator and deifies the creature.

These gods are worshiped to manipulate the divine. These gods will bless me as long as I sacrifice. These gods will give me children as long as I serve them. These gods will provide a fruitful harvest as long as I offer things.

At the core of idolatry is the desire of self, the selfish desire. And what happens to idolaters? They must be utterly destroyed. This verb means to be devoted to destruction. They're specifically set apart for destruction.

This is not just like any death penalty but a total annihilation of him and his property as well. And they must not be touched. All three of these case laws link to idolatry and they all lead to the death of the participants.

And one thing we need to clarify is that the church is not the nation of Israel. Therefore, we do not put to death who commit any of these things. That is not our job. That's the government's job. However, we must take these sins seriously enough to confront idolatry when it is present among us.

Like sorcery, idolatry seeks the power to manipulate the created order. Like bestiality, idolatry seeks to overthrow God's position to order his creation. Currently, the most obvious idol in our culture is the idol of self.

I get to define my gender. I get to define my sexuality. I get to pursue my desires at any cost. Eventually, self-idolatry involves other people. When there is a person who does not agree with you or who does not like you, you get anxious or distressed.

Why does she not like me? Why does he ignore me? How come she doesn't text back? What did he mean by this reply? This is because you believe that you're entitled to their worship. The root of this is still the desire for control and power over another image bearer of God.

The anxiety and distress occur because your power and control over another human being is threatened or non-existent. She does not think you are all that. How dare she? What your friend thinks of you, in fact, is none of your business.

You have no control over her mind. And this is important because it's such a subtle form of idolatry, but it is idolatry nonetheless. No human being has the ability nor the prerogative to control what another person thinks of you.

That is narcissism. It's to manipulate the minds of an image bearer of God. We have no authority to do. That's deifying ourselves and dehumanizing other people and de-godding God. Idolatry. Now, how do we find freedom from idolatry of self?

After all, most people may not know that you're worshiping yourself because it's so subtle. Unless you speak it out loud, people are not going to correct you. You find freedom from idolatry of self when you encounter the one true God.

In the end, all idols shatter before the presence of the real God. When you stand next to the cross of Jesus Christ, you cannot be anything but humbled. When you look at what Jesus had done for you, I am so sinful that nothing but the death of my God could rescue me from my sinful self-centered self.

It's the only way. Any other way to fight, idolatry of self will ultimately fail. It will be jumping ship from one idol to the next. Then, you must view yourself as how God views you. Your identity is not based upon what your friends think of you.

No matter how positive and favorable that may be, no matter how often you play the compliment affirmation in your head, that's not who you are. Your identity is not based upon how many followers you have on social media.

No matter how many blue check marks you're given, it doesn't matter. That's not who you are. Your identity is also not in your sexuality. Homosexual, bisexual, LGBTQ alphabets, that's not who you are.

If you trust in Jesus Christ, your identity is a blood-bought child of God. To exchange that for anything else is horrendous. It's defrauding yourself. When that becomes real, when you know that that's your identity, you're a child of God, blood-bought child of God.

When that reality is filling your mind constantly because you're meditating on it, you're thinking about it, you're praying about it, you're reading it out loud in scripture, that that is your identity.

It does not matter what anyone thinks of you. Who cares? If the God of the whole universe sees you as his child, his son, his daughter, what does it matter what anyone else thinks of you? That's how you fight idolatry, when you encounter the real God.

Care for the Vulnerable as an Expression of God's Character

Now, what does God require of his people when treating the most vulnerable? God's people must care for the most vulnerable because God cares for them. God's people must care for the most vulnerable because God cares for them.

From commands against de-godding God, we move to commands against dehumanizing humans. This is logical. Those who refuse to honor God as who he is cannot possibly honor humans who are made in the image of God.

And this has been proven true over and over again through history. Government systems and nations who have rejected one true God have done the most horrendous killing of their own people. I'm not even saying people of other nations, their own people.

Communist China killed over 50 million of their own people. Soviet Russia killed over 20 million of their own people. What do they have in common? They rejected God. They adopted communism. Instead, that was their religion.

They had no regard for people who are made in the image of God because they had no regard for God. Here, there are four groups that the law protects. Foreigners residing in the land, widows, orphans, and the poor.

Foreigners, widows, orphans, and the poor. First, God protects the foreigners living among Israel. You shall neither mistreat a stranger nor oppress him for you are strangers in the land of Egypt. These two commands are very similar, not mistreating and not oppressing.

However, they cover different bases, although they overlap quite a lot. The verb to mistreat is used for subjects that are individuals. At an individual level, Israelites must not discriminate or nor exploit foreign-born residents.

That means how you treat your neighbor who's not an Israelite matters to God. Now, the next verb, the verb to oppress, is often used with the subject of a national entity. In fact, Exodus 3 .9 uses the same word when Egypt oppressed Israel.

Now, therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which Egypt oppressed them. What does this mean? Israel, whether individually or nationally, must not exploit foreigners who are living among them.

After all, the foreigners were vulnerable. They did not belong to a specific tribe. They did not speak the same language. They did not have the same heritage. Now, what is the reason that Israel must protect these people?

The reason is that they were also strangers in the land of Egypt. Translation, you must not be like Egypt. You must not become Egypt 2 .0. God did not deliver you out of Egypt to create a people just like the pagan nation.

However, God delivered Israel out of Egypt in order to create a nation that was totally unlike the pagan nations. Instead of copying their neighbors, Israel was delivered to reflect the Lord their God.

God commanded Israel to care for those whom He cares for. The next two groups of people whom God protects are the widows and the orphans. You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. Just like the foreigners, widows and the orphans are vulnerable because they have no one to take care of them.

In the ancient Near East, not having a protective father or husband could mean starvation or exploitation. And the next two verses describe what will happen if Israel afflicts them. If you afflict them in any way and they cry at all to me, I will surely hear their cry and my wrath will become hot and I will kill you with the sword.

Your wives shall be widows and your children fatherless. How do you get the long suffering and patient God to pour down his wrath? Attack the defenseless, abuse the vulnerable, oppress the weak. The wrath of God will be a perfect restitution.

If you abuse the widows and the orphans, your wives and your children will experience the same thing. They will become widows and the orphans. If you mistreat the least of these in any way, you will have to deal with God himself.

And the last group of people God defends are the poor. If you lend money to any of my people who are poor among you, you shall not be like a money lender to him. You shall not charge him interest. It is important to note that the banking system back then was hugely different.

We live in an economic system where debt drives the wealth creation. Wealth, in fact, debt incentivizes wealth because of our complex tax code and our reckless monetary system that keeps on printing trillions of dollars.

Our system is based upon debt. Hence, we actually see billionaires borrowing billions of dollars and no one would think of them as poor or needing of protection. In fact, some of you might think we need protection from them.

Well, that was not the case in the ancient Near East. They could not just print their way out of poverty or problems, but rather money was tied to their productivity, how they worked and what they produced.

Hence, those who needed to borrow money were some of the most impoverished people in Israel. They had nothing that they could produce. Those who entered into debt did so to survive, perhaps even after a huge disaster that ruined their farm.

And when in the surrounding regions, the surrounding nations, the interests were unbearable. Loan contracts from Newsy, which is a southwestern city in Mesopotamia, they charged 50 interest per year.

That could stop our inflation. Eshnunna of Sumer and Hammurabi Code of Babylon charged 33 .33 per year on grains and 20 to 25 on silver per year. They considered silver the real money. I don't know about you, but those are pricey interests.

Now, knowing that, Israelites were not to further impoverish the poor among them. The poor were struggling just to survive and feed themselves. How could they pay even close to the going interest rate of the surrounding nations?

By setting up this law, God provided relief for the poor among his own people. By setting up this law, the poor could find refuge in the Lord's compassion. Verses 26 through 27 further protects the poor from any potential abuse.

If you ever take your neighbor's garment as a pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down, for that is his only covering. It is his garment for his skin. What will he sleep in? And it will be that when he cries to me, I will hear, for I am gracious.

Now, a pledge is different from the interest. A pledge was taken to guarantee the borrowed money would be paid back. A pledge secured the repayment of the debt. However, for a poor person, even taking the pledge would have been devastating.

Verse 27 considers the dire plight of the poor who has to pledge her only garment, a large cloth that she would wrap herself at night to prevent from being frozen to death. The reason, again, is that God is gracious to the poor.

He has compassion on the poor. And when Israel became a nation, God used his people to show his compassion for the most vulnerable. While the surrounding regions overburdened their poor with interest rate that's highly unpayable, for God's people, they will not be burdened with such thing.

For God's people, even the garment that was taken as a pledge will be returned before the sundown, because it cared about the well-being of the most vulnerable. And this continues in the New Testament as well.

James 1 .27 tells us, pure and undefied religion before God and the Father is this, to visit the orphans and widows in their trouble and keep oneself unspotted from the world. Take care of those who can't repay you.

Take care of those whom you have no expectation of getting anything back. That's what it means to reflect God's character, because that's who God is. He graciously gives without any expectation of repayment.

God's gracious heart has not changed from the Old to the New Testament. In fact, the New Testament believers witnessed the fullness of his grace in his son when his son gave himself for us. Jesus didn't ask anything back.

Just believe. You don't have to pay Jesus back. It's a gracious gift. And the fullness of this selfless deity who gave himself for the most desperate and the vulnerable, we see that in Christ. And as God's people, we must reflect that.

In fact, I found out this morning, we actually have a deacon's fund plate right in the back. And the deacon's fund is set aside specifically to take care of the poor and those who need help for any reason.

That fund is not going to my salary. It's not going to anything else but to take care of the poor among us. So if you would like to give to take care of the poor among us, please do so. And I can guarantee you the elders here really do take care about of the people who need help, whether financially or physically or any way.

And they're very wise about where the money's going. You know, we don't throw spendthrift parties with the deacon's fund, right? We really steward it well. So pray about it and just know that the deacon's fund's back there.

And we'd like to thank you for those who have been faithfully giving to the deacon's fund, right? For all these years, you have been showing God's gracious character to the people who have been helped.

Thank you. Third, God's people must set apart what belongs to the Lord. God's people must set apart what belongs to the Lord. First, God's people were required to keep their mouths set apart for the Lord.

You shall not revile God nor curse the ruler of your people. This is a command against blasphemy and slander. It is important to note that God forbids His people from cursing not just Him, but His chosen rulers.

When we revile God and His rulers, it is actually the fruit of the internal distrust and dissatisfaction with God's will. In one sense, you cannot revile against God's chosen rulers without implicitly reviling against God.

Implicitly, it is to claim, I would have chosen a better ruler. My way would have been better, God. It is idolatry popping up its ugly head once again. This thought that I would have done better than God.

Second, God's people must set apart what belongs to the Lord. You shall not delay to offer the first of your ripe produce and your juices, the firstborn of your sons you shall give to me. As Israel would dwell in God's promised land, God had the right to take the first fruit, the choicest of the fruits of the land.

After all, it is His land. Israelites were just borrowing it. They were stewarding it. And verse 29 covers the first agricultural production, ripe produce and juices. Juices here mean liquid offerings, such as the juice from the grape or olive, like olive oil, right?

Now, the reason why it tells us not to delay is because, it's not because God needed that immediately, as if God requires olive oil and wine, but rather delaying was a sign of defiance. Well, I deserve to enjoy it first, not God.

Or in another way, let's say you have the ripe fruits and it's so abundant because the promised land is fertile. It's the promised land. You get all the first fruits and it starts to go bad. You kind of see it getting soft to the touch, starts to smell.

You get the fruit flies. Oh, it's still considered the first fruit. I'll give that to God. That could happen. That's why the command is not to delay. Because God wanted the internal obedience, the right heart, not specifically the ripe fruit.

He wanted the full allegiance, not the agriculture. From vegetation, verse 30 opens up to animals. Likewise, you shall do with your oxen and your sheep. It shall be with its mother seven days. On the eighth day, you shall give it to me.

Now here, it's not exactly the same manner, but it's a similar manner. The firstborn of livestock were to be given to God because it was produced in God's promised land. In this case, the baby had to wait full seven days in order to be fattened up for the offering.

For livestock, the firstborn did not go bad after seven days, but rather they got better. They got more choice. They became more desirable as they fattened up. Of course, another view was that it was not humane to take away the first newly born animal away from its mother.

Let the mother enjoy the baby for a little bit. And that was the proper way of giving honor to whom the honor was due. Third, God's people must set themselves apart for the Lord. Verse 31, and you shall be holy men to me.

You shall not eat meat torn by beasts in the field. You shall throw it to the dogs. For the modern audience, this sounds really odd, but flesh torn by beasts, whether it's from fatal disease, mortal injury, or any defect, all of those things would have made Israel ritualistically unclean, impure.

Eating discarded torn meat was a low standard because it was so close in resemblance to death. Now, what's wrong with death? Ever since Genesis 3, death was the result of sin. When sin entered the world, death entered the world.

However, remember God's people, they worship the God of life. God who is a source of life. God who sustains life. Hence, what they eat reflected who they are. Because in the Old Testament, the physical phenomena taught God's people of spiritual reality.

Avoiding meat that has been so affected by death for such a long time, torn by beasts, that's like a roadkill. That closely resembled death. It was so close to death. It was not freshly killed meat. It's been sitting out there with whatever, who knows how it was killed.

So, avoiding meat that was so affected by death was a lesson for Israel to learn what kind of God they worshipped. God's people who worshipped God of life must physically avoid anything that has been disturbed by death.

God's people in the end must be set apart wholly onto the living God. And we will go over more dietary restrictions in the future. But all these animals that the Jews were prevented to eat were because they were so close to death.

In fact, Jews were mainly allowed to eat animals that are herbivores because plant death wasn't technically death. After all, in the Garden of Eden, people could eat plants. But they were commanded not to eat animals that feed on other animals because that's another level of death.

So, when you do read the dietary laws in the Old Testament, think of it this way. How does it connect to death? Ah, yeah, pigs, they eat anything. They can eat dead bodies. That's really close to death.

Ah, shrimp, they're scavengers. That's really close to death. Now, how does the church set herself apart for the Lord, right? We don't set ourselves apart by what we eat. That's been changed and fulfilled by the Lord Jesus Christ in Mark 7.

He declared all things clean. Because in the end, the dietary laws pointed to what Jesus will do. He will make not just physical things clean, but spiritual things clean. And He did so through His death and resurrection.

He took on our filth, our sin, our iniquities. And He faced the wrath that we deserved so that His righteousness would be accounted to us. And that's how He redeemed us to be His holy people. That's why 1 Peter 1, 15 through 19 shows this cleansing process.

Not through what we eat, but through what Christ has done. But just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do. For it is written, be holy because I am holy. Since you call on a father who judges each person's work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear.

For you know that it was not with perishable things as silver and gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life, right, idolatrous way of life, handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.

For the new covenant people, we are set apart through the redemption of Jesus Christ on the cross. We're made holy, not because of what we've done or what we've eaten or not eaten, but because Jesus shed His blood to set us apart from our evil ways.

And it is precisely by trusting in Him who has made us holy that we can actually live in a manner that is holy unto the Lord. Jesus first cleansed us so that we can live in a holy manner. Let us pray.

Father, we're thankful for what Jesus has done for us. We could not uphold the law completely, so you sent your Son to die for our sin, and He perfectly upheld the law, and His righteousness is imputed to us, and we thank you for that.